No. Back in the Soviet days, we were all equally poor, except for the few animals who were more equal than the others.

Regular power and water cuts. Party line telephones (in a major city in 1989). Persistent shortages of one kind of foodstuff or another (retirees lining up at the state run dairy store at 5am to get their share before it ran out). Nearly decade-long waiting lists for automobiles and furniture.

We came here when I was 7 in the early 90s. Our first place here was an apartment across the street from a supermarket in Philadelphia. We went a day or two after we settled in and I'd never seen my mothers jaw drop so low when she saw all the food just there for purchase.

But equality!

They're not. Takes less time to see a shape than to decode digits. That's why they're still around as wall clocks almost a century after various kinds of digital readouts became practical.

you insensitive clod!

The typical demographic for MTV when it began is near retirement age now.

"Disclaimer: Google, its subsidiaries, and corporate affiliates do not provide medical advice."

Right up there with "Caution: contents hot" on coffee cups.

This is America. No one will stop you from wasting your hard earned currency on quack pills, lottery tickets, and the like.

Someone out there on the internet is wrong ??!

I must rectify this at once! I'm sure my usual tersely worded stern missive will do the trick!

Explain to me please why under Biden ten million people showed up unannounced and why under Trump they effectively stopped.

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/s...

Dis. Fucking. Ingenuous.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki...

Biden's day 1 order revoked Trump 1 enhanced enforcement order.

You are correct. This order does not have the words "open borders" in it. It does not de jure open the borders. The executive branch does not have that authority. This order merely reverts to the old honor system of releasing illegal border crossers into the country with a court date years in the future.

But again: playing word games and asserting that de facto open borders is not open borders is not de jure open borders is disingenuous and if you believe your own side's sophistry, that's up to you. I do not. I see de facto open borders, I see 10 million people entering the country in response to that, and I conclude that the Democratic Party is not interested in enforcing the border.

I infer from additional context, including persistent bellyaching among lower level Democrats to defund ICE and pinky swear enforce the laws through other methods; persistent assertions that border enforcement is racist because of the average melanin content and superficial appearance of people on either side of the border; and a persistent undercurrent of left-wing internationalism that rejects as immoral any national borders, that the Democrats are uninterested in enforcing the border because they believe in their bones that to do so is immoral.

And while they are free to hold that belief, it is a deal breaker for me. And it is a large part of the reason I voted for Trump and will continue to vote for the most viable opponent to the Democrat on the ballot. Unless and until the Democrats shed this nonsense from their platform and from their beliefs. The former is pretty easy to do. The latter requires generational turnover.

Disband the agency tasked with enforcing the law and claim that's not the same as not enforcing the law.

The FBI didn't exist before the 1930s. Let's disband it and claim that as the reason for why we're not taking the teeth out of federal law.

Dis fucking engenuous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Sources cited inline.

Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan are still in Congress and influential in their caucus.

And oh look: ten million people plus with an incentive to steal social security numbers so they don't technically work under the table:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/1...

Illegal "Dan" in the article also killed someone in a motor vehicle accident and like a good citizen stayed at the scene and gave his stolen identity to responding law enforcement.

It isn't fucking victimless. It's an importation of mass poverty and mass lawlessness. And it is an abdication of the responsibility of the state to its citizens when the party in power does it on purpose, no matter how much warm and fuzzies and John Lennon vibes it gives them.

Biden tried to require every federal contractor to do it before it was reversed by the courts.

It happened. It was a dumb panicky overreaction that was of at best limited utility at the time it was imposed, it was done only to satisfy a bunch of hypochondriac loudmouths in the Democrat leadership, and it further eroded public confidence in the public health apparatus, to absolutely no one's benefit.

It fucking happened. It was not insignificant.

In Massachusetts at least, all those illegals were eligible for free housing paid for by the state. By the time the rules were changed to restrict eligibility to "long-term Massachusetts residents," the emergency shelter system was sucking down about a billion a year out if a state budget of about 50 billion.

They's takin' my shit, in more pithy parlance.

As for breaking laws....again: federal officers enforcing existing federal laws is not breaking laws.

I've signed away all sorts of things and have to have so many kinds of physical id cards and security tokens on me as a condition of my chosen employement I just don't give a fuck anymore.

Is it bad that a citizen gets swept up in immigration enforcement? Yes.

Is that a reason to revert to the old honor system approach to immigration enforcement where you get a court date years in advance and pretty please show up and don't steal anyone's social security number between now and then? It is not.

Blue states occasionally declare curfews during a bout of lawbreaking. Is it good in a vacuum? No it is not. But is it understandable in context? Yes it is.

Like I said a few threads back...you really do need to understand the degree to which the open borders of the previous administration, and the entirely predictable entry of nearly ten million mostly illegal immigrants under those policies, *was* an emergency that justified and continues to justify increased enforcement.

What is it that you could do during the Biden days that you cannot do now? What rights have you lost that you, your father, and grandfather had that Trump crossed his arms and blinked his eyes and you don't have it anymore?

You can say what you want. Even under your own name. Even if most of us choose anonymity (and have always chosen sone degree of anonymity) to make our private lives a little less complicated.

You can go abroad just like before without needing an exit visa.

You can spend your money how you choose. Associate with whomever you choose. Read whatever you choose.

What rights have you lost?